Saugus Union School District officials held the first of several public meetings about the new trustee area voting system for the school district’s Governing Board on Tuesday night.

The public hearing was held to receive public testimony concerning proposed trustee voting area plans associated with the district’s transition to a by-trustee area election system, according to the agenda.

However, there were no public speakers for the topic and the resolution was unanimously approved, said Board Member Rose Koscielny.

Previously, the district has been served by a five-member board elected by all voters in the school district.

After the planned switch, each of the five board members would represent a unique geographic area within the district.

The new system would allow only voters within each trustee area the opportunity to vote for candidates who also live in that area.

SUSD Governing Board members released four proposed trustee-area voting maps on Thursday.

The maps are broken down into five sections, one for each seat on the SUSD Governing Board.

David Ely, of Compass Demographics, presented the “basic requirements of drawing districts,” which are the federal requirements and state law requirements.

The federal requirements are broken into three parts: equal population, minority voting rights and equal protection.

“The districts have to be equal in population,” said Ely. “The law, as it stands, is that it has to be equal in terms of total population based on the most recent Census.”

The second federal criteria is the protection of minority voting rights, which is based on the 14th Amendment and the California Voting Rights Act, or CVRA.

Nothing can have a discriminatory purpose when designing an election system, Ely said.

“The things that we do also cannot result in vote dilution. Vote dilution does not necessarily have to be intentional to be illegal,” said Ely. “We have to be careful when we draw districts that they are not done in a way that makes it harder for minorities to elect candidates of their choice than it is for others.”

Race also must not predominate when drawing the districts, Ely added.

“Race can be a factor and almost always will be a factor in the analysis of districts but it can’t predominate over everything else,” said Ely. “You can’t make assumptions about race and use that to drive the entire process.”

The state law has four points that describe the rules for drawing districts:

• Topography
• Geography
• Cohesiveness, contiguity, integrity and compactness of territory
• Community of interest.

“In looking at all of these things, one thing that is a very strong issue in this geographic area, Santa Clarita in general, is the nature of connectedness based on canyons and major canyon roads and how people are divided by different things,” Ely said. “We’re doing this in context of the CVRA, we looked at concentrations of ethnic groups within the jurisdiction.”

In April, a complaint was filed against the SUSD for an alleged CVRA violation.

“This action is brought by Plaintiff for injunctive relief against the Saugus Union School District (“SUSD”) for its violation of the California Voting Rights Act of 2001,” according to the complaint. “The imposition of SUSD’s at-large method of election has resulted in vote dilution for the Latino residents and has denied them effective political participation in elections to the SUSD Board of Trustees.”

School officials previously asked the county for permission to consolidate its elections with the November vote on even years to improve voter turnout, said Saugus Union Board Member Judy Umeck. The county denied the request in April 2013, saying that the county could not accommodate such a request.

District officials are hoping to have one of the proposed maps implemented by the 2016 Governing Board election.

Below are the dates, times and locations of the remaining public hearings. The public is invited to attend any of the listed meetings/hearings.

Oct. 14 Community Meeting – Tesoro del Valle Elementary

6:00-7:00 p.m. Multipurpose Room

29171 North Bernardo Way, Valencia

Oct. 15 Community Meeting – Skyblue Mesa Elementary

6:00-7:00p.m. Multipurpose Room

28040 Hardesty Ave., Canyon Country

Oct. 21 Community Meeting – Emblem Academy

6:00-7:00 p.m.Library

22635 Espuella Drive, Saugus

Nov. 3 SUSD Board Meeting – Public Hearing – District Office

7:30 p.m. 24930 Avenue Stanford,  Santa Clarita

Nov. 17 SUSD Board Meeting – Vote on Trustee area maps – District Office

7:30 p.m. 24930 Avenue Stanford, Santa Clarita